How to Train for Longevity (Not Just Fitness)

One of the things that is a hallmark of aging is a reduction [music] in fast fibers. These things are incredibly important. Can I change it with exercise? Absolutely you can. However, you have to do something besides just run. You need a combination of some sort of broad strength training and broad endurance. And so these folks that were literally 80 or 90, their cardiovascular function, their resting heart rate, their blood pressure marketkedly healthier. That number is about the V2 max you would find for a normal college male. If a saber-tooth tiger ran in the room or or whatever and it chased it down, college of men would probably have gotten eaten before the the 90 year olds. If you want to maximize health and and overall functionality throughout time, you need a combination of some sort of broad strength training and broad endurance. I can actually talk about a couple of studies that I've done. One of them we actually did in Stockholm, Sweden, and we worked with a whole bunch of crosscountry skiers that were in their 80s and 90s. And so they were competitive skiers in the 1940s and50s and they had been skiing competitively for that entire duration. So you're talking 50 to 60 consecutive years of competing. So these are 80 to 90 year olds living alone and healthy. And we compared them to a group of individuals uh here in America who are the same age but were not exercising. And what we wanted to do is to see and kind of look at what are these lifelong endurance individuals? What do they look like? So we ran them through a whole bunch of V2 max tests and we did the same thing for those folks back here in America. A standard number is about 18 is what we call the line of independence. So if your V2 max is below 18 milliliters per kilogram per minute, it's very hard for you to live by yourself. So your fitness is so low, you probably are going to need to have somebody living with you or you'll need to be in some sort of assisted living home. So if you are in like V2 max of 20 or 21 or 22, you're not below that line of independence, but you're on that threshold. And so what we found was our folks here in America, the group average was right around that number. So if they got a cold or they had anything pop up where they lost a little bit of fitness, they were going to drop below that line and would probably have to go to some sort of assisted living situation. The folks in Stockholm, the the cross country skiers, the group average was much closer to like 35 to 38. Now that number is about the V2 max you would find for a normal college male. And so these folks that were literally 80 or 90, if a saber-tooth tiger ran in the room or or whatever and it chased it down, college men would probably have gotten eaten before the the 90-year-olds. So here here's the downside, though. So I only told you about their V2 max. What I didn't tell you about is their leg strength and functionality. And that part was no more superior than it was their counterparts who were not exercisers. So what that showed really really clearly, you will see in general their V2 max, their cardiovascular function, their resting heart rate, their blood pressure. It will be marketkedly healthier than folks who don't exercise. It is extraordinarily clear that type of exercise is very important for chronic disease management. No doubt about it. However, it is not sufficient for overall global health because it does almost nothing for leg strength for any other marker of health which we can talk about. what are the things that are actually going to predict mortality, morbidity the most? You're leaving things on the table for your overall health. Now, one could argue they're 80 and they they're doing pretty well, but they weren't doing as well in these areas. And so, a study we did later actually as a follow-up was looking at monozygous twins. This is the perfect exercise scientific experiment. Monozygous identical twins mean they have the exact same DNA. So, an egg was fertilized, split, and then two humans grew out of that with the exact same [music] DNA. And so now we can start answering the question, well what about maybe these crosscountry skiers, maybe they were just genetic freaks. Well, genetics are always a component to it, but how much? Well, now we have a scenario lining up where it's like, wait a minute, you have monos like us twins. So we have a replica of a human being, exact same DNA. The only differences that we would see in their physiology now would be due to lifestyle circumstances. Interesting. Do they exercise? Well, one of them does. He's a lifelong endurance exercise. Runner, cyclist, swimmer, iron man, all these things. What about the other one? Nope. He doesn't exercise at all. All right. I want to bring them in the lab, but I'm not just going to look at one system. I want to do everything. So, we took stool samples. We took blood. We did vertical jump tests. We did maximum strength tests. We did MRIs of muscle mass. We did V2 max tests. We did efficiency stuff. We we did genetic testing. We did an IQ test. We did psychological battery. We wanted to look at everything to figure out of these things what differ between the twins. And if so, the second key question there is by how [music] much. And so again, we had another example of a classic endurance only training paradigm [music] compared to a a person who's I think was a truck driver. They both exercised up through high school about 18. They stopped doing it. By the time we brought them in the lab, they're in their mid-50s. So it was about 35 years of difference. And when we ran them through the testing, if you look at the the measures that were similar to the Sweden study, it was almost identical. The exercising twin was significantly better at things like a lipid panel, resting heart rate, blood pressure, V2 max, any of those markers. What was very interesting though was the things that were in the middle. First of all, their total amount of muscle mass was almost identical like to the gram within the margin of error of a DEXA scan. The non-ex exerciser though was a little bit fatter. So the difference in actual body weight was explained almost entirely by body fat. So okay, like no one's surprised there that the exerciser was a little bit leaner even though it didn't change total amount of muscle mass at all. When we looked at some of the more functional tests and we looked at things like muscle quality, you can kind of think about this as how much fat is inside the tissue. But in general, the muscle quality was not in favor of the exerciser. Um, if you looked at the performance testing and if you looked at strength, it favored the the non-ex exerciser. And so now again, we have the same finding we saw in our Sweden study but in identical twins. And so it really really highlighted the fact that if you want to move forward with optimal health, simply picking one silo is not going to get you there. Can you change some of these metrics? Yeah, not even close. These things are very responsive regardless of your genetics. Your genetics will give you a starting place very clearly. Um, even the non-ex exerciser was a pretty healthy guy, so they were in a good spot. His mid-50s, doesn't exercise, doesn't really pay attention to his diet at all, and he was in a pretty good shape. However, [music] if you want to actually move progress and move forward uh high functionality, you have to do something besides just run. Now, [music] I could say the same thing for strength training because I don't want to make this seem like I'm saying endurance exercises. It [music] worked in both case in both these studies. Those folks were much better off in metrics that are incredibly important to mortality. How long you're going to live, V2 max, etc. It's just not going to get there in terms of strength. We took a look at muscle fiber physiology as well which is very interesting. There's generally two types of muscle fibers fast twitch and slow twitch. And one of the things that is a hallmark of aging is a selective reduction in fast twitch fibers. And that's because it's difficult to activate them unless you're doing high force activities. You're going to activate slow twitch fibers doing almost any activity of daily living. And so they stay around. Fast twitch fibers unless you're doing something of high force are going not be used and they're not going to be kept around. And that's a problem because when you look at things like the need for leg strength, the ability to catch yourself from a fall, these things are incredibly important. If you don't have fast fibers, you don't have the speed to get your foot out in front of you on time, and you don't have the eccentric strength to stop the fall from happening. And so, if you look across in the aging literature, they're very clear about the importance of maintaining strength and and fast fibers over time. So, we know that this is an important distinction and people will often talk about, okay, how much of that um is genetically determined? Can I change my fiber type? And the answer there is is resoundingly yes. And can I change it with exercise? And the answer is absolutely you can. And the next question is how [music] much? So now again we're going to see an order of magnitude. In general each one of your muscles in your body has a different percentage of fast twitch and slow twitch. For example your calf. That's generally mostly slow twitch. Typically 80% or so slow twitch. The gastro which is the other one right next to it. So if you were to point your toe next to your face and that part that kind of flexes [music] out in the middle that's your gastro. That is almost the inverse. So, it's generally 80% fast twitch, maybe 20% slow twitch. Generally, anything anti-ostural or postural rather anti-gravity, uh, spinal erectors, things that are meant to keep you up or moving all day are going to be slow twitch. And things like your hamstrings, which are for explosion, are going to be fast twitch. Well, we biopsied the quad in these individuals. [music] And in that muscle, it's generally about 50/50. Fast twitch, slow twitch. Well, one of the things that we found was in the non-ex [music] exerciser, it was almost textbook what you would predict. It was about 50% or so slow twitch, a little bit of percentage of fast twitch, and then about [music] 20% of what are these called hybrid fibers, which are a hallmark of inactivity. In the exerciser, it was about 95% slow twitch. And so, it's extremely clear. I mean, you're going from 40% slow twitch in one case to 95% slow twitch in another [music] case. It shows you that the limits of physiological adaptation are darn near boundless given enough exposure. And in this case, 35 years of extremely consistent training. And his muscle morphology was completely different than his identical twin with the exact same DNA.

What’s the best way to train for longevity? Using decades of exercise science, this video explains how strength training and endurance work together to improve healthspan, independence, and long-term performance. Subscribe to RESPIRE for more science-based health tips: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyNaCRf6Aaljcm9ZWARawXw re·spire (verb) – (1) to breathe (2) to recover hope, courage, or strength 🌟🌟🌟 NEW VIDEOS EVERY WEEK 🌟🌟🌟 00:00 Introduction 00:37 Endurance vs Strength 06:33 Fast Twitch Muscle Fibers This video is a condensed and highly edited version of the full 255 minute podcast from @HubermanLab. For more information, watch the full episode (link below) and follow the podcast. Andy Galpin is a tenured full Professor at Parker University and is the Executive Director of the Human Performance Center. He is a Human Performance scientist with a PhD in Human Bioenergetics and over 100 peer-reviewed publications and presentations. Dr. Galpin has worked with elite athletes across the UFC, MLB, NBA, PGA, NFL, Boxing, Olympics, and Military/Special Forces, and more. Podcast Host: Andrew Huberman Podcast Guest: Andy Galpin YouTube: @HubermanLab Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEYE-vcVKy8&list=PLPNW_gerXa4N_PVVoq0Za03YKASSGCazr Fair Use Disclaimer 1. Under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, commenting, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. 2. We do not own the rights to all content. They have, in accordance with fair use, been repurposed with the intent of educating and inspiring others. We must state that in no way, shape or form are we intending to infringe rights of the copyright holder. 3. Content used is strictly for research and education, all under the Fair Use law. #longevity #strengthtraining #endurance #functionaltraining #functionalfitness #strengthandconditioning #strength #fitness #healthtipsforhappylife